Reviews for Effective C#: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your C#

1. excellent book let down by poor editing

   Rated 3 out of 5 stars, May 12th, 2006

   This is a great book. However it's full of misprints and unnecessary re-iterations. I notice that Scott Meyers (of 'Effective C++' fame) was consulting editor, but it has nothing of the lean, concise style that the original effective c++ book had.
   
   Having said that, I wouldn't be without it, but I hope the second edition is a bit tidier and 90 pages shorter!

2. Another quality 'Effective' book

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, November 12th, 2005

   Another good book in the Effective series. Though if like me you have read Effective Java and have come from a Java background then you will probably have seen variations on the same items before. For instance this book has its own C# slant on the equals contract and hash codes that many Java programmers will have seen before. The items are still worth reading, as though the general theory may be known, the C# specifics are new.

   This book is very open to people from a wide range of programming backgrounds, but a number of items do seem to be based on beating old style techniques out of Windows C++ programmers. If you are an old Windows C++ programmers it may seem that this book was written just for you.
   
   My main criticism of this book is that I thought it had a tendency to describe items in an overly long and complicated way. But this is just a style issue and doesn't detract too much from the content. The things I loved the most were the debunking of common myths, such as 'avoid foreach' and 'avoid DataSets'. And my favourite item was a good example of how to program custom attributes to make reflection simpler and easier. This was a great example of attributes and a valid use of reflection and was the prefect precursor to the item 'Don't overuse reflection'.

   Like all the 'Effective' books before it this is one to read once to get the general understanding, then to leave on your desk to reference again and again when the items become relevant to what you are doing at that moment.